The Effect of Hypocrisy, Part 1

Dishonoring God

John Piper

John Piper is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books, including A Peculiar Glory.

But if you bear the name "Jew" and rely upon the Law
and boast in God, 18 and know His will and approve the things that
are essential, being instructed out of the Law, 19 and are
confident that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to
those who are in darkness, 20 a corrector of the foolish, a teacher
of the immature, having in the Law the embodiment of knowledge and
of the truth, 21 you, therefore, who teach another, do you not
teach yourself? You who preach that one shall not steal, do you
steal? 22 You who say that one should not commit adultery, do you
commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? 23 You
who boast in the Law, through your breaking the Law, do you
dishonor God? 24 For "THE NAME OF GOD IS BLASPHEMED AMONG THE
GENTILES BECAUSE OF YOU," just as it is written.

Warning Against Anti-Semitism

I want to begin this morning with a caution. Anti-Semitism has
been a great sin in the world, acted out by Christians and
non-Christians throughout the centuries. By this I mean that there
has been terrible mistreatment of Jewish people for no reason other
than their Jewishness. Just one horrible glimpse from 1919, during
the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia:

There were bands of Ukrainian bandits. The most fearsome was
under the command of an anarchist and anti-Semite called Makhno.
Makhno's men delighted in "drying the herrings," as they called the
process of hanging Jews. They would suspend several between posts
on a loose rope; as the rope tightened the victims tried to cling
on to each other in their death-agonies, the Makhnovtsi sitting
around laughing, drinking, and betting on who would survive the
longest. (D. M. Thomas, Alexander Solzhenitsyn: A Century in His
Life [New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998] p. 31)

And in Christian England, the Jews were expelled from the island
in 1290 and not allowed to enter England again for 365 years, until
Oliver Cromwell gave freedom of religion to the Puritans and other
non-conformists in 1655. The story of anti-Semitism is a terrible
story and I mention it as a warning.

It is true that God reigns over such terrible things, and even
uses them at times to bring about his own judgments (as the
prophets make very clear, Deuteronomy 28:20-68; Jeremiah 9:16;
24:10; 25:16; Ezekiel 5:17), but never does that make the hatred or
the persecution less sinful. Remember the word of Jesus in Matthew
18:7, "It is inevitable that stumbling blocks come; but woe to that
man through whom the stumbling block comes!" In other words, even
if there are judgments in the world on Jew and Gentile, woe to
Christians (or any others) who presume to usurp the Lord's
vengeance (Romans 12:19-20).

I mention the danger of anti-Semitism because Paul is now, in
this text, continuing his indictment of the Jewish world as
sinners. Verse 17: "But if you bear the name 'Jew' . . ." and so
on. How easy it would be to turn this passage into an ethnic slur.
It is not that. Paul himself was a Jew, all the apostles were Jews,
and Jesus was a Jew. And in Romans 9:3, Paul was ready to be
accursed for his unbelieving Jewish kinsmen. In Romans 10:1 he
said, "Brethren, my heart's desire and my prayer to God for them is
for their salvation." Paul loved his Jewish kinsmen who were not
Christians, and he risked his life over and over for their
salvation.

Both Jews and Gentiles Need the Gospel

The point of these verses is not an ethnic slur, but an argument
that Jews -along with the entire Gentile world - are sinners like
us, and in need of the gospel, in spite of having so many
advantages in the Law. Remember where Paul is coming from and where
he is going in this book. He is coming from the great gospel
statement of Romans 1:16-17, "The gospel is the power of God for
salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to
the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from
faith to faith." In other words, the righteousness that God demands
from us - but that we do not have and cannot produce in our
depravity - he now makes available to us through faith in Christ
(see Romans 3:21-24).

Then in Romans 1:18, Paul begins the explanation why this gospel
is so desperately needed by both Jew and non-Jew. First he treats
the morally corrupt world of the Gentiles in Romans 1:19-32; and
then he treats the more moral world of people with higher standards
to show that they too are sinners, and Jews are among those with
the highest standards of all in the ancient pagan world. So he must
show that even they are in need of the gospel of Christ for
salvation. He is aiming toward Romans 3:9, "What then? Are we
[Jews] better than they? Not at all; for we have already charged
that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin."

So the point here is not to isolate the Jews as uniquely
defective. The point is that even their higher standards of
morality - even their possession of God's Law - does not exclude
them from the need to hear and believe the gospel of Christ. They
are under the power of sin, just as the rest of the world is. Paul
aims to show that all of us - us, not just them - are sinners and
in need of salvation that comes through the gospel of Christ alone.
This is an act of love toward Jews and Gentiles, even when it is
interpreted as arrogant or demeaning.

"Do You Dishonor God?"

What, then, is the specific point of today's text, Romans
2:17-24? The main point is found in verse 23: "You who boast in the
Law, through your breaking the Law, do you dishonor God?" The
answer to that question is, Yes. We know this because verse 24
assumes a "yes" answer. Paul puts it in a question to help his
readers be honest with themselves: You ask and answer this
question. You search your own heart. Is this not so?

So verse 23 really means: "You who boast in the Law, through
your breaking the Law, you do dishonor God." The main point of this
passage is that the Jewish people, along with all the world,
dishonor God. I say, "with all the world," because of what we saw
back in Romans 1:21 - that all the Gentile world was guilty of the
same thing: "For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him
as God or give thanks."

Jewish people and Gentile God-fearers might have heard that and
said, "That's right, those godless, irreligious pagans dishonor
God. But Paul has been at pains now, since Romans 2:1, to say, "It
isn't any better among the people with high moral standards, even
the Jews. They, too, dishonor God.

So the great issue in these chapters is the honor - or the glory
- of God. This is crucial to see. If we want to think Biblically -
think the way the apostles thought and the way God thinks, we do
not merely talk about everybody being a sinner; we get more
specific than that and ask, "What is sin?" What is at the heart of
our corruption and our depravity as human beings? What is wrong
with us? Why is there so much evil in the world and what is the
essence of this?

The Essence of Evil - Dishonoring God

Given what we have seen in Romans 1:21 (pagans dishonor God) and
Romans 2:23 (Jews dishonor God), we get the message that the
essence of evil is dishonoring God. Evil is the feeling and
thinking and acting that treats God as less than infinitely
valuable and satisfying. So when we get to Romans 3:23 and Paul
gives his own definition of sin, this is what he says: "There is no
distinction, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of
God." The essence of sin is falling short of the glory of God, that
is, not treating the glory of God for what it really is - the most
valuable reality and the most satisfying treasure in the
universe.

This is why we all need to be saved. This is why we need a gift
of righteousness that is not our own. We have fallen short of God's
glory. Or as Romans 1:21 says, we have "not glorified him or
thanked him as God." Or as Romans 2:23 says, "Through your breaking
the Law, you dishonor God."

O how we need to hear this today, because almost all the forces
around us urge us to think of sin - if at all - as an offense
against man, not God. Evil is when man is hurt, not when God is
dishonored. Evil is when I am abused, not when God is dishonored.
Evil is when I am threatened, not when God is dishonored. We need
to hear Paul's unrelenting witness to the God-centered
understanding of sin and righteousness. Only this will prepare us
to understand and receive the gospel of the gift of God's
righteousness. And that is Paul's goal in these chapters - to
prepare Jew and Gentile to understand and receive the Gospel.

Now we ask, how was God dishonored among the Jewish people? Next
week we will answer that question from verses 17-22. We will ask,
How can Paul really claim that the Jewish people were thieves and
adulterers and temple-plunderers, when this was not their main
reputation? We will come back to that.

Ruining God's Reputation

But today we ask: How was God dishonored according to Romans
2:24? Here Paul quotes an Old Testament prophet to explain and
support his statement in verse 23 that the Jews "dishonor God." He
says, "You who boast in the Law, through your breaking the Law, do
you dishonor God?
(24) For [and here he quotes Isaiah 52:5] 'THE
NAME OF GOD IS BLASPHEMED AMONG THE GENTILES BECAUSE OF YOU,' just
as it is written." In other words, the dishonor Paul has in mind is
that the reputation of God among the nations is contaminated. The
nations look at God's people and think little of their God. The
quote from Isaiah referred to the derision that the nations gave
Israel when Israel went into captivity. We know it was Israel's sin
that brought the captivity on them. So in their breaking the law,
as verse 23 says, they dishonored God. They brought contempt on the
name of God.

This was exactly the opposite of why God had chosen Israel. "'I
made the whole household of Israel . . . cling to Me,' declares the
LORD, 'that they might be for Me a people, for renown, for praise
and for glory.'" They were created (Isaiah 43:7) and chosen for the
honor of God - to display his worth and value and beauty and
greatness and trustworthiness and all-satisfying excellence. But
instead, they lived as if their God were worthless and the world
was valuable instead. And God handed them over to their enemies.
The result was that God was ridiculed and his reputation was
belittled.

The point of all this is that sin is "falling short of the glory
of God" (3:23), and that Jews, as well as Gentiles, are under the
power of sin (3:9). Both of them - all of us - dishonor God. That
is our situation. That is our danger and liability. That is our
curse and our guilt and our bondage. We don't love the glory of
God. Or, as Romans 1:23 says, we "exchange the glory of the
incorruptible God for images."

The Good News

The Gospel is the good news that God has sent his Son, Jesus,
into the world to set this condition right - in three ways. 1)
Jesus came to vindicate the worth of God's glory by living for it
with all his might (John 17:4) and by dying to show that it is
worth the greatest possible sacrifice (John 12:27-28; Romans
3:25-26). 2) Jesus came to rescue us from the wrath of God against
all that dishonors his glory. He did this by dying in our place and
by becoming for us a righteousness that we could never achieve on
our own (Romans 3:24; Philippians 3:9; 2 Corinthians 5:21) - the
righteousness that we have in union with Christ by trusting him
(Romans 3:21). 3) Jesus came to change us into the kind of people
who value the glory of God above all things and who live to show
his worth (Matthew 5:16; 1 Corinthians 10:31; 1 Peter 4:11).

For example, turn with me to Romans 15:8-9. Why did Christ come?
Why is there a Christian Gospel? Why a book of Romans? Why a
Bethlehem Baptist Church? Why a saving of your soul? Here's Paul's
answer, and it is in direct response to the problem of God's
dishonor in the world and in our lives: "I say that Christ has
become a servant to the circumcision [=the Jews] on behalf of the
truth of God to confirm the promises given to the fathers, and for
the Gentiles to glorify God for His mercy."

So he mentions a purpose of Christ's coming in relation to the
Jews and a purpose for Christ's coming in relation to the Gentiles.
For the Jews it is to confirm God's trustworthiness. To vindicate
his truthfulness. In other words, to confirm and restore God's
honor and integrity. And for the Gentiles, verse 9 says, Christ
came so that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. In other
words, Christ came to reestablish God's honor - God's glory - for
Jews and Gentiles, that is, to repair what Romans 1:19-3:20 says
was ruined.

All Have Fallen Short

That is where we are this morning. No one in this room loves the
glory of God the way he should. We have all fallen short. We have
dishonored God. We have exchanged his glory for images. He is not
cherished and treasured and admired and loved with a fraction of
the fervor that he deserves. So we have fallen short. We are under
the power of sin. And we are guilty before God.

Our only hope is that Christ came to change that. To vindicate
the God we have belittled. To clothe us with a righteousness that
we cannot provide on our own. And to change us into the kind of
people who delight in the glory of God and the honor of God above
all things.

So I want us to end with a time of prayer that God would come
and save us from the unbelief that makes other things look more
attractive than God.